Fantasy Tiered Rankings

American League Starting Pitchers

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Today we continue our positional tier rankings. Last offseason, Derek Carty tackled the tiers by himself; this spring, we've decided to attack them as a team. Players at each position will be divided into five tiers, represented by the number of stars.

Five-star players are the studs at their respective position. In general, they are the players that will be nabbed in the first couple of rounds of the draft, and they'll fetch auction bids in excess of $30. Four-star players are a cut below the studs at the position. They will also be early-round selections, and they're projected to be worth more than $20 in most cases. Three-star players are the last tier in which players are projected to provide double-digit dollar value in auctions, and two-star players are projected to earn single digits in dollar value in auctions. One-star players are late round sleepers and roster placeholders. As was the case with our positional rankings series, the positional tiers aren't simply a regurgitation of the projected PECOTA values.

We retained last year's roster requirements for the positional tier series. Dollar values come from our PFM using a 12-team, standard 5x5 scoring format, with 23-man rosters and the following positions: C (2) 1B (1) 2B (1) 3B (1) SS (1) CI (1) MI (1) OF (5) UT (1) P (9). The minimum bid for players is $1, and, as we did last year, we'll allocate $180 of a $260 budget to hitters. Players needed to play in 20 games at a position to qualify there. The PFM is customizable, so if your league uses a different format, you can adjust it to match your league settings and see how it impacts players’ dollar values.

You could make a case for Verlander to be by himself, but Price and Hernandez have proven themselves to be remarkably consistent as well. Thus, while Verlander has reached a higher ceiling, all three offer a level of stability rarely found at this insanely volatile position.

Five-Star Value Pick: If Hernandez were on a team that supported him a bit more at the plate, his win totals would likely surpass 15 each year, and he would be treated like Verlander and Price. Instead, he has to get value by logging tons of innings with amazing ratios and striking out the world. He has posted four straight seasons with at least 232 innings, and his ERA has been over 3.06 once during that span (2011, when he threw 233 2/3 innings of 3.47 ERA ball.)

I almost broke up this group, as I see some separation between the top three and bottom four, but then I’d have had six tiers. Though they are all in the same tier, you have a mix of profiles here—from proven veterans like Sabathia and Weaver, who have been excellent year after year, to late-career breakout wonders like Dickey, who turned the corner once he became a knuckleballer, and then had his transcendent season a year ago, but still faces some skeptics.

Then, you have the up-and-coming mid-20s potential stars in Darvish and Scherzer, who both showed flashes throughout 2012 of how high their ceilings are. And, we’re not done yet, because we also have two young stars, one of which is still more potential than performance (Moore) and the other of which showed the excellence (Sale), but has a dark cloud overhead regarding his mechanics and potential for injury. Even the White Sox were worried last year, as they briefly shifted Sale back to the pen to protect him before realizing he was far more valuable to them as an ace.

Four-Star Value Pick: I think the concern over age and move to the American League surrounding Dickey is a bit overstated. First off, the age piece is close to irrelevant for a knuckleballer. Meanwhile, if he pitches at or near his 2012 level, then the ‘27 Yankees wouldn’t stand a shot against him. If he was still with the Mets, I think he’d be more appropriately valued, but his move to the American League East has created a buying opportunity—especially since some still think it’s the AL Beast.

Shields has been a favorite of mine for years, and were he still with Tampa Bay, he would easily be in the four-star camp. Unfortunately, the move to Kansas City comes with some risk factors. Moving out of Tropicana Field (3.34 career ERA) is a definitely a concern, but Kauffman Stadium helps pitchers, too; I’m more worried about his departure from that Tampa Bay defense. Shields’ increasing ground-ball rate (from 41 percent in 2010 to 52 percent last year) was handled adeptly by the Rays (.723 defensive efficiency, tied for first in the majors), but the Royals, who ranked 28th with a .689 mark, might not be so friendly.

This is the tier that can win you your league. Whether it’s a return to greatness (Lester), a sustained return to greatness (Peavy), staying healthy (Johnson, Anderson, Morrow, and even Fister if you’re looking solely at his 2012), or results catching up to the skills (Sanchez), if these guys realize their ceilings, they will add another staff ace to teams that might already have landed their top arms from the two tiers above.

Three-Star Value Pick: I’m going to cheat and go with two: Lester and Fister. I’m giving Lester a pass for 2012, because it was just a nightmare scenario in Boston, and it’s not like his velocity plummeted or he got hurt. He threw more innings than in 2011 and actually shaved his walk rate from 9.4 percent to 7.8 percent.

Fister, meanwhile, was sidelined by a nagging left-side injury twice, limiting him to just 161 2/3 innings. Had he stayed healthy, folks might have noticed that he essentially kept all of his strikeout gains from the second half of 2011 and posted a career-best 51 percent ground-ball rate, which surprisingly did not doom him in front of the Tigers’ shaky infield defense.

The top three in this tier are definitely on the cusp of moving up, but Wilson’s walks elevate his WHIP, Hellickson’s lack of strikeouts cuts into his value, and Kuroda is 38 years old and has somehow posted his two best major-league ERAs in the last two years despite also posting his two worst HR/9 rates.

Cobb has become a fantasy darling thanks to his brilliant spring training numbers, which include a 2.81 ERA, 0.94 WHIP, 28 strikeouts, and just five walks in 25 2/3 innings. Jason and I repeatedly professed our love for Cobb on the podcast well before this spring, so these gaudy Grapefruit League stats are only hurting our chances to steal him in our leagues.

Harrison is a mini-Hellickson in that his lack of strikeouts simply caps his fantasy value at a certain level; his ratios are so strong that you can’t ignore him nonetheless.

Two-Star Value Pick: Hammel was limited to just 118 innings last year, which is a damn shame because he was in the midst of a breakout season. Despite Baltimore’s dream run to a playoff berth, I think Hammel’s emergence didn’t hit the radar as hard as it should have considering the incredible gains he made against stiff competition. A healthy Hammel will easily earn his draft-day cost, and if he picks up where he left off in 2012, then he could become an integral part of your rotation regardless of league format.

Home-run Holland would be a sweet nickname for the Rangers lefty if he were a hitter; it’s about the worst nickname possible for a pitcher. The promising youngster has only posted one HR/9 rate south of 1.0 in his four-year career: a 0.9 effort in 2010, over just 57 1/3 innings. He has the chance to be special if he can rein in the homers, as he showed in a second-half run back in 2011, when he posted back-to-back shutouts to start a 97-inning stretch of 2.77 ERA and 1.16 WHIP work, along with a 10-1 record. He showed glimpses of that dominance for three starts here and five starts there, only to blow it with a run of multi-homer outings that erased all of the good work.

Tillman needs to show more of what we saw in 2012 to move up a tier or two, but he is a very intriguing option after what appears to be a big step forward, which came with the improvement of his secondary stuff. Meanwhile, the Angels find three-fifths of their rotation within this tier, which can’t be heartening to Halos fans. That said, I do like Blanton a good bit. He has shown promising underlying stats, but like Holland, home runs have sunk him. Hopefully, moving to a friendlier park yields results more commensurate with Blanton’s skills.

There is a mixed bag of upside at the back end of this tier, too. Can Niemann get a role and stay healthy all year? Is Porcello’s standout spring training (21-to-0 K:BB) an indication of things to come? Will Davis’ bullpen success transfer back into the rotation? How likely is Romero to recapture the magic he lost entirely last summer?

One-Star Value Pick: I already spoke about him, but it’s Blanton for me. I’m drawn to the component skills and his escape from homer-friendly Citizens Bank Park.

It looks like the Eraser is out for Maurer. Erasmo had a fine spring, but Maurer's was insane so it won out. Maurer will be a rookie throwing his first MLB innings so I think he'll perform as such which means inconsistently. I could see taking a flier in AL-onlys, but nothing crazy.

A little, but velocity has never been his thing so even a drop doesn't necessarily terrify me. He succeeded with a dropped velo last year. Push-come-to-shove in a draft, I might still take Scherzer, Moore, and Sale ahead of him myself, but that's because I'm a huge strikeout guy.

They didn't make it through the casting process. 1/2 star, but seriously, I like Masterson in later rounds this year. We carry at least 8 SP a piece so Ubaldo Jiminez will also grace someone's roster this year as well.

Trade a 24 year old pitcher with three years of MLB experience, still under team control at reasonable prices and still plenty of untapped potential for a 37 year old corner outfielder still owed $36 million? Even if the Cubs paid all of Soriano's salary that's an awful deal for the Tigers.

Unless you were thinking that adding woeful outfield defense to their catastrophic infield defense would be worth it for the lolz.

Technically, you are correct, that would be a great target for the Cubs, but if we're making one-sided trades, why not Soriano for Harper & Strasburg?

We are talking about a pitcher who might not even have a spot to start for a guy who hit over 30 home runs last year. Don't see that as being that bad for the Tigers. Obviously near all his salary would need to be picked up, but Soriano's can still hit and is a large improvement over Dirks.

I think that'd be a horribly short-sighted deal for the Tigers. I don't think he's that much of an improvement over Dirks and his difference over Dirks isn't nearly as large as the difference between Porcello the next-in-line SP for Detroit should the suffer an injury. I'd be beyond angry if my Tigers did that deal.

I agree. These projections are GREAT. But they would have been a lot more useful if they had been wrapped up a week ago. I felt naked, alone and vulnerable at the draft without the Tiers being complete, despite having BP13 and BP.com up on several tabs of my browser.

2012 wrapped up by March 22 for example.

Maybe having the entire team in on it as opposed to one writer adds more time to the process?

Well the projections have been available for some time, no? Those could've been retrieved from the PFM before this piece ran.

It's not really a number of writers thing. It's that we were pumping a lot of what we believe to be great content and since the actual projections were already available, the tiers weren't an early-March priority.